Just the Two of Us
by Raserei Hojo
Summary: Eiri picks up Tohma at the airport expecting some kind of reward in return. Instead of ending up safely at home, Eiri ends up at the hospital and he doesn't remember how or why.
1. Sweets

The only other person in the world who shared the same memories of New York with him was asleep in the passenger seat. Of course, that person wouldn't even _be _in his Mercedes fogging up the window if he had just taken a taxi. The man was thirty-four-years old! He'd be thirty-five in another eight months, give or take. Wasn't he responsible enough to arrange that kind of thing ahead of time?

No, wait. He did arrange it, the bastard. Tohma knew he could talk Eiri into doing any number of things for him and if he couldn't, he knew exactly who to turn to: Mika. When he'd rejected Tohma's request to pick him up at the airport, Mika called him ten minutes later saying how she was on her way to take him shopping for a birthday present for their father. When he had to choose between five hours of shopping and a two hour car ride with a person who might feed him sweets, the choice was obvious.

Except the bastard didn't have any sweets for him.

Eiri groaned in discontent as he pulled up to a red light. No chocolates, no caramels, no strawberry shortcake. Hell, even a gift card would have been nice. But no, apparently Tohma's presence alone was the gift. He was beginning to wonder if he'd made the wrong decision to pick up his brother-in-law at the airport.

"Seguchi, if you start drooling on my door…."

"I'm not _drooling_," came the half-asleep reply. Tohma lifted his hand anyway and felt around his mouth to check.

"I thought you were asleep."

"Your voice woke me up."

"That fast?"

"Okay, I was dozing."

Eiri rolled his eyes and pressed his foot against the gas pedal a millisecond after the light turned green. Tohma always did that—he pretended to be asleep or pretended that he wasn't paying attention. Really, Eiri should have known better. Or maybe Tohma had just gotten better at pretending. He'd always been a master of Let's Play Pretend, hadn't he?

"Aren't you going to ask me how my trip was?" asked Tohma as he nearly snuggled against the window. Probably because he knew what would happen if he tried to snuggle against him right now.

"I agreed to pick you up at the airport, not to have a chitchat with you about New York."

"You sound upset," came the accusing reply.

"I am." And he was. Eiri felt like he had gone out of his way for nothing. If Tohma wasn't going to repay him somehow, why should Eiri do any of the work?

"Don't be such a baby," said Tohma. He turned his head just a little to smile at Eiri in cover of midnight's darkness. "You know I brought you a gift."

"Did you now?" Eiri glanced at his brother-in-law before breaking at another red light. Why were there so many red lights at midnight, anyway? Everyone was either at home asleep or having sex. That or drinking their troubles away at the local bar, and he knew from experience that _that _led to sex, too. So basically, unless you were asleep or some pathetic loser, you were having sex and didn't have a need for a dozen red lights at midnight unless you happened to be an unlucky blond towing your brother-in-law around.

"I did. It's packed away in my suitcase, though. If you swing by my house this evening, I'll give it to you then."

Oh, so that's how it was. Tohma was trying to use a Buy-One-Get-One-Free Coupon. Well, it wasn't going to work. "I'm not making an extra trip. You'll give it to me when we get to your house or this is the last time I'm picking you up from _anywhere_. You hear me?"

"Okay, okay. No need to get so mean about it."

Mean? How was he being mean. He was doing the bastard a service and demanded payment, that's all. Was it necessary to guilt trip him like that? "So what did you get me?"

Tohma placed an index finger in front of his lips and closed his eyes. "It's a secret!"

"I hope it's non-perishable."

"Oh? So you _are _coming to pick it up tonight?"

The light was finally green and Eiri slammed his foot on the gas pedal. Anything to get this nuisance home faster. "If I don't pick it up tonight, you'll just bring it over tomorrow morning. I'd rather get it over with sooner than later."

Tohma just laughed. He'd won. He always did, didn't he? That was Seguchi Tohma for you. It wasn't in the man's blood to lose. Eiri watched from the corner of his eye as his brother-in-law shifted in his seat. Apparently, the shorter blond was going to sleep with the back of his head leaning against the window and the rest of his body half-twisted around. Maybe he wasn't such a genius after all.

"Seguchi…."

"Mm?"

"Don't sleep facing me like that. It's creepy."

"I'm tired but I'm not asleep. A seventeen hour flight, even when you're flying first class, is pretty exhausting. On top of that, the plane was delayed."

"Your head's going to break the window if we hit a bad bump in the road and you're going to scoff my leather with your boots."

Tohma cracked open a sleepy eye. "Worried about me?"

"No. I'm worried about my car."

There was that smile. The plastic one that said _I'm wounded_, but was pleasant and polite all the same. Well, wounded or not, Eiri wasn't going to take it back. Tohma would just lecture him about how he should have brought one of his less expensive cars if he was so worried about it getting ruined. It wouldn't matter to Tohma whether or not he _liked _this car—which he did—just that he was worried over damaging an expensive car he had chosen to drive.

The next twenty minutes were uneventful. A silence had fallen over the Mercedes and from the way Tohma's head was tilted and the relaxed expression he had, the older blond was asleep. Probably. It was hard to tell with a man who wore a mask of emotion every day. It was better Tohma was asleep anyway. A sleeping Tohma meant no nagging about food or health or Shuichi.

Damn red lights. All of this stopping was making Eiri think about the things he didn't want to. Maybe it _wasn't _such a good thing for Tohma to be asleep. At least he kept Eiri from remembering the things he didn't want to. He'd talk about something else as a distraction or make a promise about how he would fix everything—a promise Eiri knew he was pretty capable of keeping.

"Seguchi."

When he didn't get a response, he was positive Tohma was asleep. He wouldn't pass up an opportunity to talk with him if he were just pretending to be asleep. Tohma may have been a good actor, but not when it came to that. Maybe if he had slept on the plane he wouldn't be so tired. Seventeen hours was plenty of time for sleep, right?

Eiri stared at his bandaged, blood-spotted hands that were folded neatly in his lap—wait. How did blood get on his hands in the first place? He was hallucinating. He _had _to be hallucinating. His hands were perfectly blood-free and on the steering wheel a couple of seconds ago. Hands that weren't clutching the steering wheel but were instead in his lap.

People who were hallucinating shouldn't be driving. He would have pulled over if the car hadn't dematerialized into a bright room full of empty chairs. Like a timid child, he looked around the room, wondering how the hell he had gotten there when just a few minutes ago he was in the car with—

"Seguchi!"

"Yuki!"

Eiri stared at Shuichi who was standing in a doorway, carrying two cans of iced coffee. Seeing someone familiar was relieving, but that didn't help him understand the situation any better. Shuichi tossed the cans of coffee aside and launched himself into Eiri's arms. He could hear them roll as Shuichi wrapped his arms around him in a tight, iron-like grip.

"Yuki! You finally said something!"

"What—you know what happened?"

Shuichi cocked his head to the side and stared up at Eiri with what seemed to be a worried expression. "Don't tell me you don't remember, either. You've been walking around in a state of shock for almost a week."

No. No he had not been wandering around for a week. Less than five minutes ago he was in his Mercedes!

"See?" Shuichi lifted one of Eiri's bandaged hands and pointed to the dried blood there. "You need your bandages changed, but you haven't let any of the doctors do more than bandage your hands up once. I was worried about you, you know! Do you know how terrifying it was to get a call from Mika-san saying you were in a horrible car accident? Then you go and act like a zombie for an entire week!"

Car accident or not, that didn't explain the apparent week-long gap in his memory. Eiri tried to calm his racing thoughts down and took another look around the room. It must have been a waiting room. There were far too many chairs and not enough beds to be a room of any patient.

"Yuki?"

So there was a car accident. A car accident he didn't remember. Eiri ran his bandaged fingers through his hair, resisting the urge to pull. It was… a green light last time, wasn't it?"

"Your car is totally wrecked," said Shuichi, his voice louder than necessary. Eiri wasn't deaf; he was trying to sort out the situation and account for a week's worth of memories.

Of course. Just as he had been thinking about Tohma chiding him for driving his favorite, most expensive car, the thing gets damaged just to prove the point Tohma would have had if he'd bothered to say anything.

"Hey, Yuki! Are you listening?"

Barely. Where was Tohma? Why wasn't he in the waiting room, too?

"Which side?"

"Which… side?"

"Which side of the Mercedes was hit?"

Shuichi blinked a few times. "You don't remember that, either? It was the passenger side."

Eiri stood up and grabbed Shuichi by the neck of his shirt, staring down at him with hardened golden eyes. "Where the fuck is Seguchi?"


	2. Cigarettes

"Where the fuck is Seguchi?"

The last thing he needed was for his brother-in-law to have gotten killed in the car accident—and it would have been his fault. He'd been driving and the driver is responsible for all of the passengers, annoying and overbearing or not. Eiri did _not _want the blood of another man on his hands again.

"He's fine!" choked out Shuichi. "Well, not fine, but he's still alive! At least he was last time I checked." Eiri's stare was murderous now. "Wait! That's not what I meant! He's okay! Really! Yuki, I can't breathe!"

Eiri released Shuichi's shirt and ran both hands through his hair. Hearing that Tohma was still alive was a relief; it meant that later, he could grab the shorter blond by the shoulders and shake him. If he had just taken a taxi home, none of this would have happened.

"Yuki?" Shuichi wrapped his arms and Eiri's neck and nuzzled him as he took a seat in the chair again. "Are you okay?" Always quick to forgive an offense from him, wasn't he?

"Yeah," said Eiri softly. "I'm fine."

Shuichi looked at him, a pouty expression on his face. He knew Shuichi didn't believe him, but he didn't feel like explaining to the kid what was wrong. A week's worth of memories were apparently missing. He'd hurt his hands somehow in the car crash and he didn't remember how. Then there was Tohma who was in some unknown condition—but he was still alive, at least.

"Shuichi." Eiri glanced at the boy beside him. "You said the passenger side was hit. What exactly happened?"

Shuichi frowned for a moment. "You really don't remember?"

"Look, I don't want to play games. Just tell me."

"Well…." Shuichi removed his arms from around Eiri's neck and took a seat next to him instead, a thoughtful expression on his face. "There were witnesses who said you were stopped at a red light when another car just plowed right into the side of your car. The people standing around were the ones who called the police."

Plowed into the side of the car where his brother-in-law had been sound asleep, sitting with his head against the window in that half-twisted position. When the car had smashed into the passenger side of his Mercedes—he really should have been dead. The older man had been _very _lucky.

"They said you were just sitting there in your car. Your hands were cut up when the police came, but you wouldn't tell anyone why. Not even me. The people who were driving the other car are fine, but their car got a little dented."

Dented. Bastards.

Eiri wished he _had _been aware enough to tell Shuichi. At least then Shuichi could have told him why his hands had gotten injured since he'd apparently forgotten the entire accident. Logically, he could conclude that the window had shattered and somehow he'd gotten the cuts that way. The thing that irritated him was that he didn't know for certain.

"Seguchi-san got pretty banged up and Sakano-san nearly had a heart attack when he heard the news! I haven't been to see him yet since only immediate family members are allowed. We've come here every day, though, and I always get you an iced coffee right before visiting hours are over."

So that was why Shuichi had been carrying two cans of iced coffee. From the looks of it, Shuichi also seemed to have caught on that Eiri didn't remember the past week, or at the very least assumed Eiri hadn't been paying attention to anything at all. Either way, he was a little grateful for the explanation—not that he ever intended on letting the boy know.

It was unsettling to sit there in the waiting room at the hospital when the last thing he remembered was driving Tohma home from the airport. The way he'd blocked out an entire week was reminiscent of the way he'd blocked out _the incident_ in New York for six years. Had it been that horrifying? He'd probably seen his brother-in-law covered in glass shards and blood. Maybe that's what freaked him out enough to forget.

But that didn't explain why the whole week was missing, just the night of the accident. What had horrified him so much that he'd been in a trance for a week? And what had snapped him out of it?

"He doesn't remember anything," said Shuichi quietly, breaking Eiri's train of thought. The boy must have retrieved the cans of iced coffee from the floor because one was being pressed against his cheek. "Radioactive something-or-other."

"Radioactive?" Well, now Eiri knew he had nothing to worry about. There wasn't anything radioactive within a hundred miles. He took the can and pulled the tab back but didn't drink from it yet.

Eiri wasn't sure if being Tohma's brother-in-law made him 'immediate family.' Probably not. What he _was _sure of was that whenever he got the chance to see him, the first thing he was going to do was make Tohma pull out his checkbook and pay for a new Mercedes. Waiting for the insurance money would take too long and he doubted his Mercedes was salvageable. Besides, if Tohma had taken a taxi….

"He means retrograde, not radioactive." Mika was standing in the doorway to the waiting room, arms crossed over her chest. "They said it's temporary. Most cases only last a couple minutes to a few hours, but leave it to Tohma to go above and beyond."

Mika lightly shrugged her shoulders and walked over to him and Shuichi. "He's right, though. Tohma doesn't remember a thing. When he woke up two days ago, he needed to be told his name, his age and even that he was an expecting father."

"I'm not in the mood for sick jokes," said Eiri and took a swig of his iced coffee. Retrograde amnesia happened in movies and cheap books. There was no way his brother-in-law was going to just forget everything, especially not when he clung so desperately to the sixteen-year-old Eiri that was supposedly somewhere 'deep down inside, sleeping.'

"I'm not joking," said Mika. She took a seat beside him and crossed her legs. "So, you decided to talk again?"

Eiri shot his sister a glare. He wasn't in the mood to explain how he had erased the events of an entire week from his mind, either. "Yeah, I guess so."

He leaned back in his chair, one thought in his mind: he needed a cigarette. If the boy attached to his arm and even his sister were going to go through with this elaborate ploy, he was definitely going to need one and by 'one' he meant one carton.

"Care to share why you haven't said a word the entire week?" his sister said.

"No." To be fair, even if he did know exactly why he'd been so out of it, he wouldn't have told her.

Mika sighed and stared at him with what was probably a concerned expression. She was always concerned about him, both her and Tohma; so concerned about him that they didn't know how to be concerned about themselves or each other unless they were sure he was just fine.

"Visiting hours," said Eiri. "They're over?"

"They're over. The doctors are lifting the restrictions on visitors tomorrow so you can see him then."

Eiri took another swig of his iced coffee. What he wanted to know was how he was getting home. Surely he hadn't driven himself there and the thought of Shuichi behind the wheel of a car powered by anything more than a paper fan was horrifying.

"Jerk," said Mika under her breath.

Again with this? What was she doing, reading his mind?

"I'm five months pregnant. I really don't need this kind of stress and he knows it."

Oh, so Tohma was the jerk. Eiri could agree with that without hesitation. Tohma did exhibit qualities of a Grade A Jerk.

"Yuki, let's go." Shuichi was tugging at the sleeve of his shirt now. For a moment, Eiri sat horrified in his chair—Shuichi had really driven him there? A flood of relief washed over him when Mika stood up and pulled out her car keys.

Whatever happened next passed by in a flurry of motions and smoked cigaretes. Mika drove him and Shuichi home and said she would be back around 10AM before taking off again and suddenly Eiri found himself showered and dressed for bed.

The bit of comfort he'd felt originally from Shuichi's presence was slowly turning itself into annoyance. He didn't _want _Shuichi to dote on him or congratulate him for speaking as though he'd been a mute all his life. He didn't want Shuichi to offer to make dinner or breakfast-in-bed. All he wanted was time to lie in his bed and think. Another cigarette probably wouldn't hurt, either.

He was getting obsessive with this thinking business, wasn't he? Even through Shuichi's non-stop chattering, he was still thinking about Tohma. If the bastard knew how much he was thinking about him today, he would probably explode in delight.

Eiri doubted he really had anything to worry about at the hospital tomorrow. Tohma was a good actor—those cold, plastic smiles that actually made some people swoon were evidence of that. His brother-in-law was just doing it for the attention. When he walked into the room, Tohma wouldn't be able to keep up the act and Eiri would stand at the doorway and smirk as Mika punished him for making her stress out so much when she was pregnant.

"Yuki! I ordered pizza!"

Eiri was ripped from his thoughts again. Oh, great. Now pizza boxes were going start stacking up in the living room. Couldn't Shuichi have ordered something else?

"Want some?"

"I don't."

Shuichi appeared in the doorway to his bedroom, a determined frown on his face. "You have to eat _something_."

"I'll eat tomorrow."

"That's what you said yesterday!"

Well, he didn't remember yesterday, did he? If he didn't remember yesterday then it didn't count. Wasn't that simple enough to understand?

"Just shut up. You're giving me a headache."

A headache wasn't something he wanted to deal with on top of everything else. The paperwork for the insurance, replacing his Mercedes…. He heard the door to his room shut and sighed. If Shuichi was upset, Eiri was sure the boy would get over it soon enough, if not in just a couple of minutes.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow at 10AM he would walk into Tohma's hospital room and prove that it was just a sick game the businessman was playing and he'd find out if Shuichi and Mika were in on it, too. Nobody lost all of their memories like that.

Nobody forgot walking in on a post-rape and murder scene. No one could ever forget that and Eiri didn't want to be the only one who remembered that day.


End file.
